9 ms·

I won't play the game, because DOTA and its many clones probably have the most unfriendly players in all of gaming, but it's great news for Linux.

by pdknsk 13y ago

shazow 13y ago
It's true, and of all the clones, I've found Dota 2 to have the friendliest community by far and it's is constantly getting better. It's night and day from what I remember it being six months ago. Valve's commitment to tweaking behaviour through player feedback has been surprisingly effective. You can read a bit about it here: http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/ http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/
delluminatus 13y ago
It's a curious phenomenon, isn't it? As a long-time DotA player myself, I maintain a separate "DotA Persona" which I fall into when playing. It's basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole. I think it essentially comes from the nature of the game: as an individual, you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of other people you have to cooperate with. It's not like tf2 or CS. The teams are smaller and the stakes are much higher. People care about winning games in DotA a lot more than they do in most FPS games, where the journey is the destination. In DotA, the win is the destination and it's the validation of your abilities (k/d ratio doesn't cut it). You would think having the win be so important would make it easier or better to work together, but the fact of the matter is most DotA players suck. Even people who consistently win public games still suck. Players hold everyone else to incredibly high standards and get frustrated when they feel like their team "drags them down." This is compounded by a feeling that, if you're doing badly yourself, you should scapegoat a team member in order to shift the blame. DotA 2 is actually a lot better. I'm not sure why exactly, and it depends on your level. Maybe there's hope.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  Relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/toxicity http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/toxicity
- grhino 13y ago
  You might be right that is the nature of the game. I played DotA for the thrill of having a powerful character exerting his dominance over other players. It just doesn't happen if your team isn't performing. Plus, DotA has incredible death penalties. The fact that you are launched into a game where your fun depends on the performance of a bunch of strangers in a fast -paced, hostile environment that penalizes mistakes heavily with only short bursts of text to communicate is a recipe for vile players. The weird thing is that the stakes are largely only whether the game will meet the player's expectations. Also, humans are generous when judging their own abilities and are miserly when judging a stranger's abilities.
  - lotyrin 13y ago
    Also it's a compounding process. Having a game that's fun only when you're succeeding selects for players that like that, which creates a social component that makes it so it's only fun to succeed. I don't find this genre fun whether I'm succeeding or not, for me it's 100% journey (casually and socially exploring the way mechanics combine into interesting gameplay - including failures as much as successes) and these games and their player base seem to be the precise opposite of that.
  - minwcnt5 13y ago
    Relevant to your last point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
    - kelvie 13y ago
      That's actually curious -- studies have shown that people from more collectivist cultures don't tend to make the fundamental attribution error, such as places like East Asia, and the former USSR states. This game is massively popular in both of those regions.
      - brokenparser 13y ago
        If you force slaves to work harder, they'll work harder. Whoop dee effing doo. I think MOBA games (except for the kiddie ones like LoL) are popular there because they like their games to be challenging. Most games today are rich in graphics but poor in gameplay, dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. At least in D2 and HoN even the most dedicated players still get a thrill out of sharpening their skills and being better then the other guy.
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  It's not inherently the nature of the game. It's the nature of matchmaking. I played HoN before matchmmaking, and it was quite interesting: you created a lobby, people would join, and you as leader could vet your teammates and kick the ones you didn't want to play with. Then the game proceeded once both sides were happy. It took about ~10mins to get a game going, but the games were far higher quality.
  - MAGZine 13y ago
    I found that the playerbase in HoN, even before matchmaking, was awful. Far worse than DotA 2. There wasn't really a good way to tell who was going to be an asshole, and who wasn't going to be one.
  - aeturnum 13y ago
    I played DOTA back in highschool and HoN for the first year or so. The toxic nature of the DOTA community has nothing to do with matchmaking. You can certainly filter people in your own games, but that only identifies the people who are so socially inept that they can't make it to the start-game-countdown without being a jerk. In the WC3 era, people left during the 5 second countdown (i.e. after attempting to ensure they were not jerks) so often that the various hosting assistance programs would watch for it specifically. The real hazard in DOTA / AOS / MOBA games are the people who slowly (or quickly) transform from quiet or reasonable people into insanely angry trash talking monsters. After all, the DOTA community got its reputation for being awful back in WC3, totally independent of any matchmaking.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  Good grief, it sounds like surfing. (the original kind, in the water)
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I spent some time analyzing this when playing WoW. The strongest correlation is with the "goal" aspect of the players. Imagine that baseball games were played using a non-discriminatory matchmaking service. So start of the "Dodgers vs Giants" game there would be a pause and then 25 "players" would materialize. Some of them would be athletes in their 20s with strong skills, some would be 40+ year old veterans who have good skills but aren't in shape, some would be 10 year old little leaguers who are very knowledgeable but inexperienced and out of shape, and some would be people who just randomly picked "play baseball" as their selected activity, not really knowing even what the rules of the game were. Then there is a "manager" who has to create a starting lineup, assign positions, and win the pennant. Extremely frustrating. Blizzard was working on "fixing" this by segregating selection of players into "twinks" and "non-twinks", "experienced" vs "non-experienced" and "hardcore" vs "casual" which helped but it still made for a crappy experience a lot of the time.
  - jergason 13y ago
    Dota 2 has fantastic matchmaking, so it avoids the problem of total newbies playing with experienced players. Because there are over 100 different heroes to choose from, sometimes you end up with people who are very experienced at the game but completely new to their heroes though, which can be frustrating for them.
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? It frustrates me to no end that, no matter how good I get, DOTA can still make sure I only win half the games. Also, I realized that I feel around ten times worse when losing than how good I feel when winning, so the expected derived pleasure from the game is really really negative, so I scaled my playing down a whole lot.
      - aetimmes 13y ago
        >How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? Because that's what the system was designed to do. If you're winning more than 50% it means that some percentage of the time, the game can't find 5 people who are better than you to put in a game. You'd have to compete at a semi-pro level to get this to happen.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  In FPS games the gameplay is a lot more ephemeral. You're racking up point after point, and your teammates are all interchangeable. In DOTA, there's only one real point. Your teammates are people you're stuck with for the entire duration of the match. And you can see their every move, no matter how far they are from you. And the worst player? The scrub? He's not just ineffective, he's actually feeding power into the opposition.
- healsjnr1 13y ago
  All this discussion about dota (and LoL etc) boil down to one thing: you NEED to play as a team. A lot of games involve team work, but it isn't crucial: that is you'll play better if you work as a team, but you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game if you ignore your team. This is manifestly untrue for Dota. if you ignore your team you'll have a horrible time and so will the rest of your team. As result this is actually an interesting social experiment: based on dota it looks like a lot of people don't like working as a team.
- k3n 13y ago
  > It's basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole. You could be contributing to the problem a lot more than you think, e.g. by way of the Broken Windows theory[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
sliverstorm 13y ago
The Dota 2 community is much, much better than the original Dota community, and better than the clones as well.
- MSM 13y ago
  I (unfortunately) think you'll find that this was due to it being in beta. Hopefully I'm wrong and the community stays relatively decent, but I'm not confident in it yet.
  - xymostech 13y ago
    I seriously doubt that anyone who wanted to play the game a week ago couldn't find a beta key floating around somewhere to play (there are about a million key giveaways on reddit, etc). I think that Valve getting rid of the beta status is more about them being confident that it's polished than wanting to release to a broader audience.
Zariel 13y ago
I play dota2 and im pretty nice and always try to be friendly to people in game, ive not really ran into "horrible" people. Depends what level you play at but once you get into the "know your bad but can play the game" level then most people are fine.
binaryatrocity 13y ago
I'd like to introduce you to www.dotanoobs.com - a personal project to create a rage-free environment for both new and experienced players to have fun together. Just moved from Wordpress to Flask, got the Valve Dota2 replay-parser running on Linux and am preparing some cool stuff with that on the back end. tl;dr: get on teamspeak (voice.dotanoobs.com) and play with people who aren't mean.
- maqr 13y ago
  Awesome. I've just started playing dota2 in a semi-serious way and it's incredibly frustrating not having 5 to play with. I don't mind being called a noob and getting critical feedback, but it's exceptionally difficult to learn how to play effectively with others when the pub community is so bad. Unfortunately, to play with good people, you have to learn how to play, and that's very hard if you can't play with good people. Your little community sounds like it'll be my gateway out of MM noob hell. I'll be on TS to try it out tonight :)
  - binaryatrocity 13y ago
    Glad to have you! While real-life might keep me away from my precious DotA this evening, hopefully I'll catch you soon! Feel free to add me on steam, name is the same as HN username.
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  +1 for doing something genuinely pleasant for online gaming. This is something that would have been nice when I was into online gaming; hopefully it becomes more common for people to run their own vent/teamspeak servers not just for personal friends but based on attitude and level of commitment.
- BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
  This is cool, but why TeamSpeak and not Mumble? As someone who would be playing on Linux, this is a non-starter for me.
  - 13y ago
mitchi 13y ago
The game is extremely addictive. When you start getting serious at this game, it means that you will be offended by many small things you wouldn't care about if you were just a casual gamer. Let's say you play at a high level game. You do well at your top lane with your carry, you farmed well for 10 minutes, even got a kill and you're satisfied with how the game's going so far. Meanwhile you have your mid lane getting crushed by the enemy. Your ally mid dies 5 times in 8 minutes and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do. The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents. So yea, that's when the unfriendliness comes from
- thret 13y ago
  I think the solution is to prevent people from playing vs other players until they've won enough games vs bots. There's nothing more annoying than someone who is too lazy to learn the basics before ruining a half-hour game for 9 strangers. And then abusive, as though they're entitled to do so.
  - mitchi 13y ago
    There's that. But most players don't have to deal with this thanks to the matchmaking system. I'm talking about how any veteran player can feed in a game and it ruins the game, inciting insults and frustrated remarks. I think the big necessity for Dota 2 is to add a forfeit button. Too much time is wasted on finishing up games. Demolishing a base with low damage can take a very long time...
    - robryan 13y ago
      On the flip side when you are winning it is nice to be able to get some reward for your hard work in being able to run through the other team.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  > ... and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do. The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents This block of text here explains why I consider the entire genre to be fundamentally flawed.
kyrra 13y ago
You should try Dota2. Out of all the games in that genre (HoN, LoL, original Dota), Dota2 seems to have the best community out there. There is match making, so you will be paired with people that are at least somewhat close to you in skill. To deal with trolls/toxic people, they have a reporting system. If someone gets reported by a number of people they will be muted and/or put into the low priority queue. Muting lasts X duration (depending on repeat offences) and prevents that person from talking at all in game (they can still use the chat wheel I believe). The low-priority queue is a separate match-making queue, where only people in this queue will play against one another. It is for people that regularly abandon games (or are toxic players). It tends to be filled with the trouble-making players.
- Tehnix 13y ago
  I'm fairly certain LoL also has these counter measures in place, alas, it's still full of trolls and toxic people (not to say that there aren't well behaved ppl, but compared to other games...)
- chc 13y ago
  League of Legends has a much more sophisticated system for dealing with jerks. It has skill-based matchmaking too (does HoN really not have it?), and you can actually be permabanned if you keep being a jerk and don't shape up. League of Legends also tries not to be infuriating as much as it can, so for example while killing somebody does reward the killer, it doesn't take gold from the person who got killed or prevent them from getting XP.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Toxic communities are intrinsic to the DOTAlike genre. Think about it - if you have a bad teammate, what happens? In other games, a bad teammate will be around for only a short game, or you switch servers, or the server will auto-scramble the teams, or the teams are large enough that the one player's failures will be diluted among the rest of a large team. At the very least in a normal game, a bad teammate will simply be inneffective. In DOTAlike games? You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did. And there's no perspective, no fog-of-war between teammates. You can see his every screw-up. Can watch it in hateful detail. And then the other team just reams you and clobbers you because they've cranked their power up.... but the game doesn't even have the dignity of ending quickly, you're stuck while they pummel you until the game ends properly instead of being trapped in this moribund state. And all the time, your hatred for that idiotic scrub boils. The game is practically designed to make you hate the weakest player on your team.
thwest 13y ago
These players tend to stay in the low levels of matchmaking. In high and very high matchmaking, people are a lot more cooperative or criticize constructively. However, without playing ~500 games (~500 hours), you probably won't graduate from the low skill bracket. Knowing that those people are out there, what you can do is be the moral leader. When the game starts, give the all-chat "good luck have fun" greeting, start discussing lane strategy, team strategy (push/turtlefarm/gank), etc. If you make a mistake, live up to it. The only time the trolls really ruin games is if everyone else is silent and lets the person continue ranting. Learning to float above the trolls' guilt trips while still being able to admit your mistakes is an interesting emotional exercise.
pxlpshr 13y ago
I've been involved in competitive gaming since the early days. Asshatery is universal and found in other communities like counter strike, quake, unreal tournament, halo, et al..
zokier 13y ago
Public multiplayer sucks in most cases. Play with your friends instead and enjoy your games.
nobodysfool 13y ago
I haven't run into many (I have about 300 hours played). There were only 2 or so that were unfriendly. I turned off voice chat a while ago though, that was due to me playing together with my brother and using mumble instead of the built-in chat. Although there was an idiot in mumble that was trying to mess with us while we were playing. I think it has to do more with he voice chat rather than the actual game.
- thwest 13y ago
  >>> I turned off voice chat a while ago though, Please please please please don't be That Guy. I encourage muting individuals who are annoying. But I use mic exclusively and how are we supposed to cooperate?
  - nobodysfool 13y ago
    Because so many people are unhelpful. It's not that they are being rude or anything, but they whine and complain after the fact... That does nothing at all to help the current situation. If that person had given instructions, or given intelligence that could be acted upon in advance, then criticism would be accepted, but so many people are saying 'why didnt you x' or 'you should have y' or 'why did you buy that piece of junk it wont work'. It's not rude, but it's not helpful either. And most people are not like you. If you are a person who uses the mic and helps the team then yes, I will turn on voice chat if you ask nicely in the text chat.
jpreiland 13y ago
While this is true far too often in DOTA, LoL, and HoN, I think it's worth mentioning that there are nice players out there. I play League of Legends, and while there's a decent chance that you'll run into a few toxic players every 3 or 4 games, most of the time if you set the tone at champion select or the start of a game with "gl hf" and, more impoartantly something like, "hey guys, how's it going?" or "let's have a good time" (as cheesy as it sounds) things end up going really smoothly. Silliness and joking helps too (such as, "Party at our nexus!" or "ey yo [champion name], what u doin later tonight?"). I've played 4 games over the past 2 days and only one person came close to raging. The worst of the worst tend to have the lowest ratings, so if you're halfway decent (which is pretty easy to achieve) then you'll be alright, barring the occasional crazy person.
whywhywhy5 13y ago
Games typically last 30-40 minutes and are heavily team-based. This scenario makes it very easy to get agitated when a person on your team screws up badly and ends up costing your team the game. Dota 2 has recently introduced a robust muting system that has really done a good job changing the behavior of the more... voiceful members online - this has led to an overall much more pleasant in-game chat experience.
plonk420 13y ago
DOTA and LoL teeter-totter as to which one has the most unfriendly players. currently, LoL around level 20-28 doesn't seem very bad. i hear Ranked (level 30, organized/draft (both teams ban some champions and then choose them, elementary school sports style)) is a bit less friendly.
mmmm 13y ago
I agree with some of the others, Dota 2 really tries to work on this. I've met so many nice people in Dota 2 willing to help out, but of course, I've met scumbags aswell. The best solution to enjoy your game when a scumbag is in your team (or the other): 1. Mute him/her. Both the chat and microphone will be muted. 2. Report. 3. Keep playing. I've done this since day one, I've muted about 5 people during the last month. It's acceptable for me. And if you team up with friends in a party, you'll have so much more fun. Please remember to commend the people helping you out. I love being commended, and that's why I'm trying to help out and staying friendly during all of my games no matter how it turns out.
JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
Sorry to burst your bubble, but: http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/29/4375560/dota-2-ban-system-results-in-a-rise-in-improved-behavior http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/29/4375560/dota-2-ban-system-r...

I won't play the game, because DOTA and its many clones probably have the most unfriendly players in all of gaming, but it's great news for Linux.

by pdknsk 13y ago

I won't play the game, because DOTA and its many clones probably have the most unfriendly players in all of gaming, but it's great news for Linux.

shazow 13y ago

It's true, and of all the clones, I've found Dota 2 to have the friendliest community by far and it's is constantly getting better. It's night and day from what I remember it being six months ago. Valve's commitment to tweaking behaviour through player feedback has been surprisingly effective. You can read a bit about it here: http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/ http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/

delluminatus 13y ago

It's a curious phenomenon, isn't it? As a long-time DotA player myself, I maintain a separate "DotA Persona" which I fall into when playing. It's basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole. I think it essentially comes from the nature of the game: as an individual, you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of other people you have to cooperate with. It's not like tf2 or CS. The teams are smaller and the stakes are much higher. People care about winning games in DotA a lot more than they do in most FPS games, where the journey is the destination. In DotA, the win is the destination and it's the validation of your abilities (k/d ratio doesn't cut it). You would think having the win be so important would make it easier or better to work together, but the fact of the matter is most DotA players suck. Even people who consistently win public games still suck. Players hold everyone else to incredibly high standards and get frustrated when they feel like their team "drags them down." This is compounded by a feeling that, if you're doing badly yourself, you should scapegoat a team member in order to shift the blame. DotA 2 is actually a lot better. I'm not sure why exactly, and it depends on your level. Maybe there's hope.

mkr-hn 13y ago
Relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/toxicity http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/toxicity
grhino 13y ago
You might be right that is the nature of the game. I played DotA for the thrill of having a powerful character exerting his dominance over other players. It just doesn't happen if your team isn't performing. Plus, DotA has incredible death penalties. The fact that you are launched into a game where your fun depends on the performance of a bunch of strangers in a fast -paced, hostile environment that penalizes mistakes heavily with only short bursts of text to communicate is a recipe for vile players. The weird thing is that the stakes are largely only whether the game will meet the player's expectations. Also, humans are generous when judging their own abilities and are miserly when judging a stranger's abilities.
- lotyrin 13y ago
  Also it's a compounding process. Having a game that's fun only when you're succeeding selects for players that like that, which creates a social component that makes it so it's only fun to succeed. I don't find this genre fun whether I'm succeeding or not, for me it's 100% journey (casually and socially exploring the way mechanics combine into interesting gameplay - including failures as much as successes) and these games and their player base seem to be the precise opposite of that.
- minwcnt5 13y ago
  Relevant to your last point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
  - kelvie 13y ago
    That's actually curious -- studies have shown that people from more collectivist cultures don't tend to make the fundamental attribution error, such as places like East Asia, and the former USSR states. This game is massively popular in both of those regions.
    - brokenparser 13y ago
      If you force slaves to work harder, they'll work harder. Whoop dee effing doo. I think MOBA games (except for the kiddie ones like LoL) are popular there because they like their games to be challenging. Most games today are rich in graphics but poor in gameplay, dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. At least in D2 and HoN even the most dedicated players still get a thrill out of sharpening their skills and being better then the other guy.
sillysaurus 13y ago
It's not inherently the nature of the game. It's the nature of matchmaking. I played HoN before matchmmaking, and it was quite interesting: you created a lobby, people would join, and you as leader could vet your teammates and kick the ones you didn't want to play with. Then the game proceeded once both sides were happy. It took about ~10mins to get a game going, but the games were far higher quality.
- MAGZine 13y ago
  I found that the playerbase in HoN, even before matchmaking, was awful. Far worse than DotA 2. There wasn't really a good way to tell who was going to be an asshole, and who wasn't going to be one.
- aeturnum 13y ago
  I played DOTA back in highschool and HoN for the first year or so. The toxic nature of the DOTA community has nothing to do with matchmaking. You can certainly filter people in your own games, but that only identifies the people who are so socially inept that they can't make it to the start-game-countdown without being a jerk. In the WC3 era, people left during the 5 second countdown (i.e. after attempting to ensure they were not jerks) so often that the various hosting assistance programs would watch for it specifically. The real hazard in DOTA / AOS / MOBA games are the people who slowly (or quickly) transform from quiet or reasonable people into insanely angry trash talking monsters. After all, the DOTA community got its reputation for being awful back in WC3, totally independent of any matchmaking.
jessaustin 13y ago
Good grief, it sounds like surfing. (the original kind, in the water)
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I spent some time analyzing this when playing WoW. The strongest correlation is with the "goal" aspect of the players. Imagine that baseball games were played using a non-discriminatory matchmaking service. So start of the "Dodgers vs Giants" game there would be a pause and then 25 "players" would materialize. Some of them would be athletes in their 20s with strong skills, some would be 40+ year old veterans who have good skills but aren't in shape, some would be 10 year old little leaguers who are very knowledgeable but inexperienced and out of shape, and some would be people who just randomly picked "play baseball" as their selected activity, not really knowing even what the rules of the game were. Then there is a "manager" who has to create a starting lineup, assign positions, and win the pennant. Extremely frustrating. Blizzard was working on "fixing" this by segregating selection of players into "twinks" and "non-twinks", "experienced" vs "non-experienced" and "hardcore" vs "casual" which helped but it still made for a crappy experience a lot of the time.
- jergason 13y ago
  Dota 2 has fantastic matchmaking, so it avoids the problem of total newbies playing with experienced players. Because there are over 100 different heroes to choose from, sometimes you end up with people who are very experienced at the game but completely new to their heroes though, which can be frustrating for them.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? It frustrates me to no end that, no matter how good I get, DOTA can still make sure I only win half the games. Also, I realized that I feel around ten times worse when losing than how good I feel when winning, so the expected derived pleasure from the game is really really negative, so I scaled my playing down a whole lot.
    - aetimmes 13y ago
      >How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? Because that's what the system was designed to do. If you're winning more than 50% it means that some percentage of the time, the game can't find 5 people who are better than you to put in a game. You'd have to compete at a semi-pro level to get this to happen.
Pxtl 13y ago
In FPS games the gameplay is a lot more ephemeral. You're racking up point after point, and your teammates are all interchangeable. In DOTA, there's only one real point. Your teammates are people you're stuck with for the entire duration of the match. And you can see their every move, no matter how far they are from you. And the worst player? The scrub? He's not just ineffective, he's actually feeding power into the opposition.
healsjnr1 13y ago
All this discussion about dota (and LoL etc) boil down to one thing: you NEED to play as a team. A lot of games involve team work, but it isn't crucial: that is you'll play better if you work as a team, but you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game if you ignore your team. This is manifestly untrue for Dota. if you ignore your team you'll have a horrible time and so will the rest of your team. As result this is actually an interesting social experiment: based on dota it looks like a lot of people don't like working as a team.
k3n 13y ago
> It's basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole. You could be contributing to the problem a lot more than you think, e.g. by way of the Broken Windows theory[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

sliverstorm 13y ago

The Dota 2 community is much, much better than the original Dota community, and better than the clones as well.

MSM 13y ago
I (unfortunately) think you'll find that this was due to it being in beta. Hopefully I'm wrong and the community stays relatively decent, but I'm not confident in it yet.
- xymostech 13y ago
  I seriously doubt that anyone who wanted to play the game a week ago couldn't find a beta key floating around somewhere to play (there are about a million key giveaways on reddit, etc). I think that Valve getting rid of the beta status is more about them being confident that it's polished than wanting to release to a broader audience.

Zariel 13y ago

I play dota2 and im pretty nice and always try to be friendly to people in game, ive not really ran into "horrible" people. Depends what level you play at but once you get into the "know your bad but can play the game" level then most people are fine.

binaryatrocity 13y ago

I'd like to introduce you to www.dotanoobs.com - a personal project to create a rage-free environment for both new and experienced players to have fun together. Just moved from Wordpress to Flask, got the Valve Dota2 replay-parser running on Linux and am preparing some cool stuff with that on the back end. tl;dr: get on teamspeak (voice.dotanoobs.com) and play with people who aren't mean.

maqr 13y ago
Awesome. I've just started playing dota2 in a semi-serious way and it's incredibly frustrating not having 5 to play with. I don't mind being called a noob and getting critical feedback, but it's exceptionally difficult to learn how to play effectively with others when the pub community is so bad. Unfortunately, to play with good people, you have to learn how to play, and that's very hard if you can't play with good people. Your little community sounds like it'll be my gateway out of MM noob hell. I'll be on TS to try it out tonight :)
- binaryatrocity 13y ago
  Glad to have you! While real-life might keep me away from my precious DotA this evening, hopefully I'll catch you soon! Feel free to add me on steam, name is the same as HN username.
obviouslygreen 13y ago
+1 for doing something genuinely pleasant for online gaming. This is something that would have been nice when I was into online gaming; hopefully it becomes more common for people to run their own vent/teamspeak servers not just for personal friends but based on attitude and level of commitment.
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
This is cool, but why TeamSpeak and not Mumble? As someone who would be playing on Linux, this is a non-starter for me.
- 13y ago

mitchi 13y ago

The game is extremely addictive. When you start getting serious at this game, it means that you will be offended by many small things you wouldn't care about if you were just a casual gamer. Let's say you play at a high level game. You do well at your top lane with your carry, you farmed well for 10 minutes, even got a kill and you're satisfied with how the game's going so far. Meanwhile you have your mid lane getting crushed by the enemy. Your ally mid dies 5 times in 8 minutes and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do. The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents. So yea, that's when the unfriendliness comes from

thret 13y ago
I think the solution is to prevent people from playing vs other players until they've won enough games vs bots. There's nothing more annoying than someone who is too lazy to learn the basics before ruining a half-hour game for 9 strangers. And then abusive, as though they're entitled to do so.
- mitchi 13y ago
  There's that. But most players don't have to deal with this thanks to the matchmaking system. I'm talking about how any veteran player can feed in a game and it ruins the game, inciting insults and frustrated remarks. I think the big necessity for Dota 2 is to add a forfeit button. Too much time is wasted on finishing up games. Demolishing a base with low damage can take a very long time...
  - robryan 13y ago
    On the flip side when you are winning it is nice to be able to get some reward for your hard work in being able to run through the other team.
Pxtl 13y ago
> ... and you soon get ganked by a level 12 middle hero when you're only level 6. You get run over as well as they're little you can do. The rest of the game snowballs like this and because you can't give up in DotA 2, you have to play for 15-20 minutes defending or not defending your base against feeded (too strong) opponents This block of text here explains why I consider the entire genre to be fundamentally flawed.

kyrra 13y ago

You should try Dota2. Out of all the games in that genre (HoN, LoL, original Dota), Dota2 seems to have the best community out there. There is match making, so you will be paired with people that are at least somewhat close to you in skill. To deal with trolls/toxic people, they have a reporting system. If someone gets reported by a number of people they will be muted and/or put into the low priority queue. Muting lasts X duration (depending on repeat offences) and prevents that person from talking at all in game (they can still use the chat wheel I believe). The low-priority queue is a separate match-making queue, where only people in this queue will play against one another. It is for people that regularly abandon games (or are toxic players). It tends to be filled with the trouble-making players.

Tehnix 13y ago
I'm fairly certain LoL also has these counter measures in place, alas, it's still full of trolls and toxic people (not to say that there aren't well behaved ppl, but compared to other games...)
chc 13y ago
League of Legends has a much more sophisticated system for dealing with jerks. It has skill-based matchmaking too (does HoN really not have it?), and you can actually be permabanned if you keep being a jerk and don't shape up. League of Legends also tries not to be infuriating as much as it can, so for example while killing somebody does reward the killer, it doesn't take gold from the person who got killed or prevent them from getting XP.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Pxtl 13y ago
Toxic communities are intrinsic to the DOTAlike genre. Think about it - if you have a bad teammate, what happens? In other games, a bad teammate will be around for only a short game, or you switch servers, or the server will auto-scramble the teams, or the teams are large enough that the one player's failures will be diluted among the rest of a large team. At the very least in a normal game, a bad teammate will simply be inneffective. In DOTAlike games? You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did. And there's no perspective, no fog-of-war between teammates. You can see his every screw-up. Can watch it in hateful detail. And then the other team just reams you and clobbers you because they've cranked their power up.... but the game doesn't even have the dignity of ending quickly, you're stuck while they pummel you until the game ends properly instead of being trapped in this moribund state. And all the time, your hatred for that idiotic scrub boils. The game is practically designed to make you hate the weakest player on your team.

thwest 13y ago

These players tend to stay in the low levels of matchmaking. In high and very high matchmaking, people are a lot more cooperative or criticize constructively. However, without playing ~500 games (~500 hours), you probably won't graduate from the low skill bracket. Knowing that those people are out there, what you can do is be the moral leader. When the game starts, give the all-chat "good luck have fun" greeting, start discussing lane strategy, team strategy (push/turtlefarm/gank), etc. If you make a mistake, live up to it. The only time the trolls really ruin games is if everyone else is silent and lets the person continue ranting. Learning to float above the trolls' guilt trips while still being able to admit your mistakes is an interesting emotional exercise.

pxlpshr 13y ago

I've been involved in competitive gaming since the early days. Asshatery is universal and found in other communities like counter strike, quake, unreal tournament, halo, et al..

zokier 13y ago

Public multiplayer sucks in most cases. Play with your friends instead and enjoy your games.

nobodysfool 13y ago

I haven't run into many (I have about 300 hours played). There were only 2 or so that were unfriendly. I turned off voice chat a while ago though, that was due to me playing together with my brother and using mumble instead of the built-in chat. Although there was an idiot in mumble that was trying to mess with us while we were playing. I think it has to do more with he voice chat rather than the actual game.

thwest 13y ago
>>> I turned off voice chat a while ago though, Please please please please don't be That Guy. I encourage muting individuals who are annoying. But I use mic exclusively and how are we supposed to cooperate?
- nobodysfool 13y ago
  Because so many people are unhelpful. It's not that they are being rude or anything, but they whine and complain after the fact... That does nothing at all to help the current situation. If that person had given instructions, or given intelligence that could be acted upon in advance, then criticism would be accepted, but so many people are saying 'why didnt you x' or 'you should have y' or 'why did you buy that piece of junk it wont work'. It's not rude, but it's not helpful either. And most people are not like you. If you are a person who uses the mic and helps the team then yes, I will turn on voice chat if you ask nicely in the text chat.

jpreiland 13y ago

While this is true far too often in DOTA, LoL, and HoN, I think it's worth mentioning that there are nice players out there. I play League of Legends, and while there's a decent chance that you'll run into a few toxic players every 3 or 4 games, most of the time if you set the tone at champion select or the start of a game with "gl hf" and, more impoartantly something like, "hey guys, how's it going?" or "let's have a good time" (as cheesy as it sounds) things end up going really smoothly. Silliness and joking helps too (such as, "Party at our nexus!" or "ey yo [champion name], what u doin later tonight?"). I've played 4 games over the past 2 days and only one person came close to raging. The worst of the worst tend to have the lowest ratings, so if you're halfway decent (which is pretty easy to achieve) then you'll be alright, barring the occasional crazy person.

whywhywhy5 13y ago

Games typically last 30-40 minutes and are heavily team-based. This scenario makes it very easy to get agitated when a person on your team screws up badly and ends up costing your team the game. Dota 2 has recently introduced a robust muting system that has really done a good job changing the behavior of the more... voiceful members online - this has led to an overall much more pleasant in-game chat experience.

plonk420 13y ago

DOTA and LoL teeter-totter as to which one has the most unfriendly players. currently, LoL around level 20-28 doesn't seem very bad. i hear Ranked (level 30, organized/draft (both teams ban some champions and then choose them, elementary school sports style)) is a bit less friendly.

mmmm 13y ago

I agree with some of the others, Dota 2 really tries to work on this. I've met so many nice people in Dota 2 willing to help out, but of course, I've met scumbags aswell. The best solution to enjoy your game when a scumbag is in your team (or the other): 1. Mute him/her. Both the chat and microphone will be muted. 2. Report. 3. Keep playing. I've done this since day one, I've muted about 5 people during the last month. It's acceptable for me. And if you team up with friends in a party, you'll have so much more fun. Please remember to commend the people helping you out. I love being commended, and that's why I'm trying to help out and staying friendly during all of my games no matter how it turns out.

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

Sorry to burst your bubble, but: http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/29/4375560/dota-2-ban-system-results-in-a-rise-in-improved-behavior http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/29/4375560/dota-2-ban-system-r...